Old Theme, New Debates
Kauṇḍabhaṭṭa on Autonymy
Abstract
Identified at an early date, autonymy has always been an important theme in the discourse of Indian Sanskrit grammarians. But this phenomenon also aroused the interest of other ancient Indian language theorists, and rightly so. In the section of the Vaiyākaraṇabhūṣaṇasāra devoted to the object(s) of noun (nāmārthanirṇaya), Kauṇḍabhaṭṭa comments on two kārikās taken from Bhaṭṭojī Dīkṣita’s Vaiyākaraṇasiddhāntakārikā relating to autonymy. It is not a mere gloss: the seventeenth century grammarian seeks above all to reaffirm the authority of the theses developed within the Pāṇinian school by refuting doctrines defended in other circles. This is an opportunity for us to study the dimensions of the autonymic phenomenon around which the ‘new’ debates crystallize. For between Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya and Kauṇḍabhaṭṭa’s Vaiyākaraṇabhūṣaṇasāra are the ins and outs of the autonymy issue the same? What is at stake at Kauṇḍabhaṭṭa’s time? These are the main questions this paper tries to provide answers to.
Submitted: July 16, 2025 | Accepted: Sept. 22, 2025 | Published Dec. 23, 2025 | Language: en
Keywords Sanskrit • Bhaṭṭojī Dīkṣita • Kauṇḍabhaṭṭa • Autonymy • Vyākaraṇa
Copyright © 2025 Émilie Aussant. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/bhasha/2785-5953/2025/02/001